As he crossed in front
I slowed
and imagined a life for him:

The wake of his walker
crashing against some
pacific island.
A beach landing in its own
right. Bullets snapping and
whining, he ran
and dove, surely surefooted.
He tried to remember
plodding through familiar green fields,
friends in close chase, the fireflies
tracing constellations
above his head. No use.

His aging face now blotched and
wilted
a flower past its time
growing
from cracks in pavement, escaping
the depths of soil and earth, seeing
far too little, enduring
far too much. Perhaps
he gave it to his girl once,
only to find it slithering down
the neck of the glass vase
gasping for breath

upon his return. He lost it.
Now, each day, he finds himself

here. A cup of black coffee in one hand,
the weight of his lost life dangling in the other
and the idle chat of a stranger behind
a counter, a divide as vast
as the wash of years
rippling out behind him.